Slashdot Mirror

Fungii writes: "There is a fascinating article over on physicsweb.com about 'The physics of the Web.' It gets a little technical, but it is a really interesting subject, and is well worth a read." And if you missed it a few months ago, the IBM study describing "the bow tie theory" (and a surprisingly disconnected Web) makes a good companion piece. One odd note is the reseachers' claim that the Web contains "nearly a billion documents," when one search engine alone claims to index more than a third beyond that, but I guess new and duplicate documents will always make such figures suspect.

TellarHK muses: "Thinking back to the CueCat debacle, and on the topic of 'soon to be abandoned-ware,' has anyone considered mucking about with the MySmart mousepads? I picked up one of these on sale at Best Buy for $5, figuring someone might come out with a way to use the 'Smart' card reader as a tool for other applications. Sure, I know this'll get a lawyer's underwear in a bunch, but I don't recall signing any license stopping me. Maybe someone's come up with a quick and dirty program or routine for it, under either Linux or Windows?" These are also at CompUSA. Smart-card access to the basement? One more layer of security on your workstation? These look like fun, if someone has a driver.

bee writes: "Qwest.net has announced an alliance with MSN that will 'transition' Qwest's dialup and DSL customers to MSN Internet Access. If you're a Macintosh user, you'll be able to continue on Qwest until they figure out what to do with you. Zero mention, of course, is made of Linux or BSD. Here's the FAQ they're pointing their customers to."

BetaRelease writes: "All ye with excess CPU cycles to spare. Here's a chance to win as much as $200,000. Join RSA's Factoring Challenge." That means you can get $10,000 for figuring out the factors for this laughably easy, completely trivial number, or twenty times that if you can figure out a slightly nastier one. While it would probably take more horsepower to win any of the prizes than the prize money could pay for, admit it would be cool to trade a 98-digit number for a few years' salary.

baboonia asks: "I have a 10GB SnapServer appliance. I'm trying to upgrade it to a 40GB drive. Does anyone know what OS SnapServer uses? It looks like some kind of proprietary flavor of Linux but DriveImage 4.0 and Norton Ghost 6.5 don't seem to like it. (DriveImage supports LinuxSwap and Linux Ext2 but sees the drive as Unallocated.) Has anyone figured out how to move contents of a SnapServer to a larger physical drive? I'll buy you a donut if you can help me out ..."

These units look like a great idea, but since hard drives tend to get larger at a faster rate than people buy new servers (even server appliances) it would be great to upgrade when 10GB is as small as it is today. Have any readers figured out how to do this?

jparadise writes: "Seems folks over at the the U.S. National Fusion Facility in San Diego have figured out a way to fiddle with magnets to contain plasma and make their scale-model fusion generator produce energy significantly in excess of what they're putting in. It's not the final answer, doesn't look like, but it seems (maybe? hopefully?) like a step in the right direction ..."

parvati writes: "The New York Times is reporting that a UMass professor, Dr. David Schmidt, used computer modeling to figure out why shower curtains suck inward during showers. He designed an image of his mother-in-law's shower, filled it with 50,000 3D velocity/pressure sensors, and turned on the virtual water. 1.5 trillion calculations later, he found that drag on the falling water drops creates a mini-hurricance, producing a low-pressure 'eye' that attracts the shower curtain."

Perhaps because science and technology have always been dominated by educated, sometimes arrogant elites, and are far beyond the attention spans or formats of conventional media, few scientific issues manage to attract the attention of large numbers of people. Gene mapping and genomics could change the nature of life itself, but few national political figures in the U.S. talk much genetics, or the impact of fertility drugs on kids and families. Spielberg raises some profound moral issues involving A.I. in his new movie, drawing a number of critical raves but proving a disappointment at the box office. And Hollywood hasn't yet even heard of nano-technologies. The emerging exception appears to be global warming, which Americans are suddenly very worried about. Maybe this is the beginning of a new era for science and politics.

This concern about global warming is significant, especially in light of the fact that the government's existing environmental policies (along with growing perceptions of technological and cultural imperialism) are making the U.S. once again the most resented country in the world. Already high on the agenda of Western Europe and a cause on U.S. college campuses, this could be the first in a series of techno-political issues that will rise up in the 21st Century. Issues like genomics will morph from gee-whiz cover stories in Time to very real concerns for individuals.

Most Americans are now aware of global warming, says a comprehensive report cited in American Demographics magazine, even though significantly fewer express concern or understanding about its impact.

In August 2000, the Harris poll asked Americans about their beliefs concerning global warming and, more specifically, about the relationship between temperature changes and forest fires. Many more than in previous surveys said they believed that global warming exists and is a serious environmental issue, although only 35 percent believe it was directly responsible for increasing forest fires in the United States.

In l997, 67 percent of Americans surveyed believed that increased carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere would, if unchecked, lead to global warming and increasing average temperatures. By last year, the figure had risen to 72 per cent. Even though they weren't aware of any specific or urgent impac on their own lives, and thus weren't particularly alarmed, nearly half thought that global warming should be treated as a "very serious" problem. In fact, only 13 percent of Americans said global warming wasn't a serious problem, a record low.

But science and the environment are becoming among the planet's hottest political issues. President Bush touched off a firestorm when he refused to sign the Kyoto accord. Although the reaction in the U.S. was less pronounced, a March 2001 Time/CNN poll found that two-thirds of Americans think the President should develop a plan to reduce the gas emissions that may contribute to global warming.

The U.S. has largely remained reluctant to address science through politics no matter how serious the issues. Big media political coverage tends to focus attention on scandal and confrontation, away from explanations of issues like global warming, or the equitable distribution of technology. Although they differ on certain scientific and environmental issues, neither of our two increasingly similiar dominant American political parties pay much attention to technological issues, or have anything resembling a scientific ideology or agenda.

When a serious matter like medical research involving stem cells from frozen embryos arises, politicians worry at least as much about religious support as they do about what scientists advise.

One might think members of Congress would be up in arms at the growing control of genetic research by a handful of bio-tech corporations; instead, there's hardly any debate about it at all.

My prediction: global warming will become the first issue of science and politics that captures the imagination of large numbers of American voters and becomes a national political issue (one on which the President definitely seems to have taken the unpopular side.) Why? Because it's a tactile phenomenon; people can feel that the weather is changing. They can see pictures of penguins dying in Antarctica. They read that skin cancer rates are rising.

Unlike more abstract scientific issues like genetics (which may become a highly visible political issue, but which isn't yet), or technologically-related social issues like intellectual property and copyright, even the myopic American political and media system, which focused for nearly two codependent years on Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, will have to start paying attention to global warming.

Craig Maloney wrote this review of a book intended to remove some of the confusion from the powerful, free 3D modelling program Blender. Blender is fun to play with, and has been used to create some amazing 3D graphics, but it's not exactly intuitive. Just figuring out what some of the major buttons do was a triumph for me, but I haven't touched it in a few years -- I'd like to try Blender again, but with a book like this one at the ready to supplement the user interface.

The Blender Book author Carsten Wartmann pages 311 publisher No Starch Press rating 8.5 reviewer Craig Maloney ISBN 1-886411-44-1 summary One of the best books around to learn how to use Blender, the free 3D modelling and animation suite from Not A Number.

What it's about This book was originally published in German as "Das Blender Buch." I was a little wary of picking it up simply because it is a translation of the original. Thankfully, I didn't have to worry, as this translation is very fluid and natural. The topics themselves, however, might be a little dense for the first-time reader and may require several re-readings to get the full meaning.

Blender is a free (as in beer) 3D modelling and animation software package. It was developed internally by Not-A-Number (NaN) for their studio work, but was later released to the general public. Blender is very powerful, and likewise very complex. The Blender Book is a gentle introduction for anyone who is interested not only in getting the most out of Blender, but also for anyone who is curious about 3D graphics.

Chapter by chapter The book starts off with a general overview of what Blender is, how to get it, and why you would want it in the first place. It then gives a very thorough, non-mathematical synopsis of color, 3D graphics, and animation techniques. Chapter 3 begins the Blender-specific topics with a quick overview of the blender interface, culminating in a simple keyframe animation. Chapter 4 introduces the basics of the Blender interface, with descriptions of the different mouse and keyboard functions that Blender uses. Chapter 5 delves into actually modelling objects in Blender, and Chapters 6 and 7 discuss materials and lighting. Chapters 8 deals with path animation, keyframe animation, interpolation curves (IPO curves), and vertex keys. Chapter 9 is a whole chapter about Inverse Kinematics (IKAs), which have been rather troubling for some Blender users. The chapter begins with tutorials for animating a robot arm, and ends with a skeleton animation of a bottle. Chapter 10 discusses particle animation, animating not only a camp fire, but also a rocket with a smoke trail, and a school of fish.

The last sections of the book deal with putting all these concepts together. Chapter 11 introduces the sequence editor, which allows the user to integrate clips with a pretty sophisticated post-production system. The example described in this chapter is a video titling sequence for a beach vacation in Indonesia. Chapter 12 discusses Python scripting in Blender, and how to use it for your animations and as a function plotter. Chapter 13 is the big reward: rendering. Naturally rendering has been discussed before this point, but this chapter contains all the neat tricks which Blender can do with the final rendering. Chapters 14 and 15 are full-scale, top-to-bottom animation and modelling tutorials, which are very useful for both beginners and experts to see how Blender manages to take a project from concept to completion.

The appendices are very well thought out, including a keyboard reference, tips and tricks, command line arguments, a Blender/Python API reference (Overview of Blender Modules), installation instructions, a glossary, and a listing of what's included on the CD. The index is also quite useful, allowing me on several occasions to find information rather quickly.

The pages of the book are very well laid out, with a 10-page full-color insert for those images that need the added benefit of color. The CD-ROM includes the 1.8 version of Blender (an older version, since as of this review Blender is now up to 2.12), and all the .blend files used in creating the animations. It also includes a gallery of the finished animations.

The upshot I have very few gripes with this book after reading it. The Blender Book was published before the program's 2.x series came out. While little in Blender's human interface has changed, it would be nice to have had an addendum for the changes from 1.8 to 2.x. Also, it would have been nice to have this book in full color, but the cost in doing such would have made this book prohibitively expensive.

The Blender Book is a book that I would give (and have given) to any aspiring 3D artist looking to use Blender. With its rich tutorials and its clear explanations of difficult concepts, The Blender Book is the perfect companion for teaching budding and intermediate 3D artists about this exciting and powerful tool.

Chapter Listing:

1. Introduction
2. Basics of 3D Graphics
3. Quick Start
4. Blender Basics
5. Modeling Tutorials
6. Material Tutorials
7. Light, Shadows, and World Tutorials
8. Keyframe, Path, Lattice, and Vertex Key Animation Tutorials
9. Inverse Kinematics Tutorials
10. Getting Small: Particle Animation Tutorials
11. The Final Cut: Postproduction
12. Python Tutorials
13. The Big Reward: Rendering
14. Laser Tutorial
15. Animating a Torpedo Through A School of Fish

1. Keyboard Commands
2. Tips, Tricks, and Useful Programs
3. Command Line Arguments
4. Overview of Blender Modules
5. Installing Blender
6. Glossary
7. What's on the CD?

• Index

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

TokyoBoy asks: "I have been looking at in-dash mp3 head units and changers lately. However, its occured to me that I would much rather make Ogg/Vorbis files instead of mp3s now. Does anyone know of any hardware manufacturers who plan on supporting the Ogg/Vorbis format in either portable or car stereo equipment?" I would figure this wouldn't be so hard to add on support to some of those Linux-based players out there. There has been a lot of press about the Empeg Car MP3 player (now RioCar...here's hoping that these units are still as flexible as they always were), over the past year, and Slashdot did this MP3 player project which also might proove to be a good starting point. If anyone out there has done this already, please share your experiences.

mindpixel writes: "Harvard scientists have concieved a revolutionary technology for probing, and eventually sequencing, individual DNA molecules using single-channel recording techniques. The technique essentially pulls a single strand of DNA through a nanopore, reading off the individual bases electrically. The technique could allow for decoding of a person's genome in hours instead of years." While the sequencing in hours instead of years is something that's pretty darn cool, our holdup in using this data is actually now what the genes are, and how they interact. That will still take years for us to figure out.

friday2k writes: "As seen on news.com Metricom finally files for chapter 11. This is too sad. Anyone know of good alternatives out there?" Nooooo! Don't do this to me! The story says, "the company intends to keep the wireless Internet service up and running for the time being," so perhaps all is not lost. Even though it's a little pricey at ~$70/month, and only works in a few cities, Metricom's Ricochet is absolutely the best wireless Internet service I've ever used. Their coverage maps have been accurate and they have always treated Linux users decently (unlike this sorry bunch). I hope a decent company buys Metricom, figures out a way to make money with the system, and bring it to the rest of the U.S., even the rest of the world. Meanwhile, all I can do is plaintively echo friday2k's question: Anyone know of good alternatives out there? (Even 19.2KBPS would be okay with me if the service is Linux-friendly and has good nationwide coverage.)

SpdyVkng asks: "Once, I worried if I ever would have the money to buy a significant number of expansion cards for my PC; then I worried about the number of slots available; now most cards I have in my computer use not only one back end, but two (or more in some cases), for their I/O needs. That has me worrying about the cases I can use: 7 knock outs for expansion cards are too few, since I really would need someting like 9 or 10. To make it perfectly clear, I don't need more than 6 PCI slots on the mother board, and an AGP, but I need more physical knock outs in the case to have access to the extra I/O ports I need and which every card seems to have these days." Of course, necessity being the mother of all invention, how difficult would it be to "adapt" some off-the-shelf cases with added ports? I would figure that an adept person with the right tools might be able to add in side and front ports, depending on the case. Are there any places out there that will custom make chassis with these and other modifications?

"My computer is used for audio edting and I need all those extra audio channels and SCSI connectors for my external equipment. Unfortunately these audio cards and scsi cards take two or three PCI places, while only utilizing one or less slots on the motherboard.

Anyone who knows of cases which can accomodate more backends than seven?"

Paintthemoon writes: "So, this crazed entrepreneur and Caltech buddies this weekend staged a successful test of using a 30-foot kite to raise a 6,900 pound concrete obelisk in the Mojave. The theory behind this is that the ancient Egyptians could have used such wind power to raise obelisks and build the pyramids ... " The article is from earlier this month. It's been a lot longer than that since scientists started trying to figure out how the Egyptians moved and righted some of their obelisks.

Jethro writes "Get 'em while they're hot, they're lovely! Yes, finally, Monty Python and the Holy Grail action figures are available! Unfortunately they're quite expensive ($150 for all five, and you wouldn't want to break up the set, right?) Limited edition, too!" Ships in October, but you can preorder now.

dublin writes: "The Electronic telegraph reports that two years ago, the first confirmed case of a CD-eating fungus was confirmed in Belize. (Ah, the price of living in paradise...) The fungus eats the aluminum right out from between the polycarbonate layers (and apparently muches a little on those, too) leaving clear spots on the CD. Have fungi always been this mean and we're just figuring it out, or have we been invaded by super-fungi? " The article, to say the least, is a little short on details. But something like this surprises me not in the least.

McSpew writes: "Astronauts on the International Space Station accidentally banged the space station's $600 million robot arm into the side of the station. No damage was done, but engineers still haven't figured out just what's wrong with the arm."

wiredog sent us a choice quote from a Washington Post story about high end audio. It compares audiophiles to drug addicts and talks about six figure stereo systems that make me cry with jealousy. Anyway, the true gold mine quote is "For that money [$140k], a local company called the Gene Donati Orchestras will send a string quartet to your home and play on your patio once a week for more than a year. Which is why audiophiles spend a lot of time defending their sanity." I dunno about you guys, but that makes my technology buying habit look like my chewing gum budget.

spock123 writes "I grew up in the 80s and spent most of my time playing the old arcade classics (Pacman, Galaga, Asteroids, DigDug, etc). Now I feel a sudden urge to own one of these guys - but I can't figure out where and how to buy them. =Do the SlashDot readers know about companies selling 80's arcade machines? Where's the best place to buy? Recommendations, links and experiences are welcome."

Bill Houlehan, the same dude who has a million unopened atari 2600 games for sale from his cave warehouse is now selling Aura VR Units which are essentially a vibrating vest you hook up to any audio source (read:pc playing quake, although I suppose it has pr0n potential as well if you swing that way). No big deal, except at $20 I figured this is might be worth mentioning on a quiet sunday afternoon. here's another review of the thing. You can get more info at the website which is a strange mix of oddball old widgets (Atari T-Shirts? Tetris Keychains? 14 Acres of Colorado Land?) that amuses the hell out of me.